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GENERAL WARNING Microgaming-powered casinos, Terms that target play patterns

A recent Pitch-A-Pitch brought to light two clauses in the Terms and Conditions of many Microgaming casinos that I feel players should be alerted to.

It is my understanding that these clauses are designed to weed out advantage players based on their typical betting patterns, but since regular players might easily be caught in the same net I believe this Warning is justified:

The two clauses in question are as follows (my bolding):

Observations of playing patterns such as the playing for deliberate
minimum risk, equal, zero margin or hedge betting may not be considered
as playing in the appropriate spirit for the purposes of meeting bonus
wagering requirements. Should the Casino deem that these practices have
been utilized for the specific purpose of meeting wagering requirements,
the casino reserves the right to withhold any cashins and/or confiscate
all winnings. ...

Other practices of playing behaviour which may lead to the casino
withholding cashins and/or confiscating all winnings include, but are
not limited to, placing single bets whereby the wager consists of the
majority of the total available balance and the bonus balance
contributing to a significant portion of that balance. Should the casino
deem that practices such as this have been utilized, the casino reserves
the right to withhold any cashins and/or confiscate all winnings.

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In the first case making small minimum-risk bets, as you might do in order to complete you Wagering Requirements, could well find you in breach of these Terms.

In the second case making a single, entire balance + bonus, bet would find you in violation of the Terms.

So, player beware, these are standard MGS Terms: they can and will be used against you if your playing patterns match those described.

We contribute to and make use of a shared industry database of promotion abusers and fraudsters. Individuals known from this database will not be eligible for any promotional offers and the casino reserves the right to lock their account and refuse access to the casino.

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Again, this appears to be a standard term among Microgaming casinos and they are in fact using this to deny players their winnings.

In a recent case a player had received two bonuses, had played fairly, met all the terms and requested a withdrawal. As a "standard procedure" the casino finance people ran the player's name through their "bonus abuse" blacklist. Turns out the player was listed and the casino then used this as their only reason for denying the player's winnings, all in accordance with their Terms & Conditions.

If this "bonus abuser" blacklist was being used to decline deposits that would be a lot more understandable. After all, they'd be filtering players based on their past bonus usage and that, of course, would be their full right. One might not like it but if they did it up front and universally then at least it would be fair.

As it is, using the blacklist solely to weed out prospective withdrawals, means the player is at full risk and the casino is simply using the system to pad the bottom line with monies from players who might be on the blacklist but lost their money instead of winning. I am yet to hear of a case where a player lost, the casino discovered they were on the blacklist and then refunded the player's deposits.

It's how they are using this blacklist that is the problem here. Either apply it to everyone at the time of deposit or get rid of it. Applying it only to winners is highly suspect.

FYI, a thread has been created in the main forums -- Bonus Abuser Blacklist (Microgaming) -- for those of you who might want to discuss this (posts are disabled for the general membership here in the Warnings forum).

Also, FWIW, I should mention that You must register/login in order to see the link. (MGS, Kahnawake) is the site that precipitated this additional Warning and the only confirmed occurrence of the Terms in question ... but they wouldn't have a networked blacklist database if other MGS casinos weren't involved.

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